Still, the fact remains: Just as Hollywood knew all along that Weinstein was a sexual predator, it seems many also knew about Spacey.

Whom else does the industry know about and protect? It’s hard to recall a time when the cultural landscape has shifted so dramatically. More than ever, the general public is inclined to believe self-reporting victims. More than ever, we are inclined to demand that the accused speak, that guilt be met with real consequence.

The next tipping point is one Hollywood may not see coming: Public disgust with those in power who know and do nothing, who knew and still deny knowing. Just ask Matt Damon and George Clooney, who spent all last week denying they knew about Harvey Weinstein (except when they did), only for the public to call out their blatant hypocrisy and reject their new movie “Suburbicon,” which flatlined at the box office. By week’s end, both actors pulled out of their scheduled public appearances. Wonder why.

===========

Indeed. Surely Netflix must have heard the rumors on Spacey? Did they bother to do an investigation before hiring him to be in House of Cards?

I would bet not – they were negligent and complicit with the silence. For greed.

Like this:

In all these red-carpet clips that are being re-played now, has anyone noticed how Weinstein shoves his wife close to him when they pose in front of photographers? It’s very brief, but clearly a violent shove. She looks distressed while she complies with the violent gesture.

And what about her? Being married to such a vile man and claiming she didn’t know what he was like?

Like this:

And there were plenty of women putting themselves on display as Exhibit A as to why the problem of sexual harassment and violence is not about men against women. It’s about turds of human beings against victims. Around the men who do the harassment, there are always garbage of women supporting them for their own horrendous reasons. Like Kate Winslet and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. The latter wrote an entire article on how horrible sexual misconduct is in Hollywood and then states, unabashedly and unequivocally, how much she adores Bill Clinton (and apparently always will). As long as Clinton treats Bloodworth OK, apparently it’s all that she cares about. In what way is Bloodworth any different than all these Hollywood male honchos who protect their buddy predators? Her mental disconnect is appalling. And you know why. Because there is no social opprobrium to put pressure on her to face her own vile protection and bond with Clinton. Quite on the contrary.

However, I will be the first to admit that clearly delineated moral choices can still be painfully complex where friendship is involved. One of the best friends I will ever have and a man I love dearly, former President Bill Clinton, has certainly taxed my feminist conscience, but always without diminishing my affection. I even helped write his apology to the nation for his own sexual misconduct, was sitting next to him when he delivered it, and believe to this day it was based on something that was none of our business. And yes, some may call it hypocritical, but I confess to having had no problem warning at least three top-level Democratic operatives against allowing Harvey Weinstein to host political fundraisers.

Lisa Bloom is one more woman putting themselves on display as Exhibit A as to why the problem of sexual harassment and violence is not about men against women. It’s about horrible human beings against victims. Around the men who do the harassment, there are always garbage of women supporting them for their own horrendous reasons. Like Kate Winslet and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason. And all the people who vote for Hillary Clinton.

The Oscar-winning actress received praise for joining the chorus of voices condemning accused sexual predator Harvey Weinstein—yet she’s defended working with Allen and Polanski.

Last week, Amazon Studios canceled the red carpet for the premiere of Woody Allen’s latest film Wonder Wheel—not because they were afraid of stars being asked about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse allegations, and most certainly not because of director Allen, who has had his own allegations leveled against him by his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow. No, it was because Amazon Studios’ president Roy Price was suspended after his own allegations of sexual misconduct. The irony of an Allen red carpet being canceled because of someone else’s abuse allegations might make you roll your eyes if you weren’t too busy seething with anger at Hollywood’s continued hypocrisy.

…

The thing you must remember about Weinstein, however, is that it took multiple women coming forward—including a movie star in Ashley Judd—for him to be ousted from his company, for the industry to care, for the chokehold he had on the press to end, and for male actors to apologize for their complicity in his reign of terror.

But what about when it’s just one woman, like Dylan Farrow? Or, until several other allegations recently emerged, Samantha Gailey, the 13 year-old Roman Polanski raped? What makes these incidents different? What makes us less susceptible to believing women?

In an interview with the Los Angeles Timeson Saturday, Kate Winslet explained why she didn’t thank Weinstein in her 2009 Oscar speech after winning Best Actress for The Reader, a film that he distributed. “That was deliberate. That was absolutely deliberate. I remember being told, ‘Make sure you thank Harvey if you win.’ And I remember turning around and saying, ‘No I won’t. No I won’t.’ And it was nothing to do with not being grateful. If people aren’t well-behaved, why would I thank him? He was bullying and nasty. Going on a business level, he was always very, very hard to deal with—he was rude. He used to call my female agent a [vulgar name for a woman] every time he spoke to her on the telephone.”

Winslet seems willing to stand against Weinstein in part because he personally bullied her. But when it comes to her Wonder Wheel director Allen, since he’s by all accounts been professional towards her, it’s apparently not her place. Of Allen’s allegations, she recently told The New York Times: “Of course one thinks about it. But at the same time, I didn’t know Woody and I don’t know anything about that family. As the actor in the film, you just have to step away and say, I don’t know anything, really, and whether any of it is true or false. Having thought it all through, you put it to one side and just work with the person. Woody Allen is an incredible director. So is Roman Polanski. I had an extraordinary working experience with both of those men, and that’s the truth.” (Winslet starred in 2011’s Carnage for Polanski.)

Since Allen and Polanski weren’t abusive to her, it’s out of mind, out of sight—which is often a complaint we lodge at others when they choose not to believe people’s stories of abuse. It’s the same shroud of secrecy that allows men like Weinstein to continue to win Oscars. It’s the same hypocrisy that allows Amazon Studios to drop an expensive David O. Russell project because of its Weinstein ties, while conveniently ignoring the fact that they had no problem working with Russell, who not only has a reputation for being cruel on set but has also faced sexual harassment allegations of his own. And then there’s of course Allen, who was lured to Amazon with a reported $80 million deal.

While it’s commendable how many people want to condemn Weinstein and profess their intentions to do better by women in Hollywood, there’s more than just Weinstein poisoning the well—and more than a few people hoping to get back to business as usual.

I commend the courageous women (and a few men) coming forward with their stories of abuse/harassment.

I am very happy to see people talking about how psychologically violent harassment is, even though it generally does not involve physical violence.

It’s nice to see people finally, in 2017!, beginning to note that most men are silent about harassment, thus they act to protect abusers as a rule.

It’s bad to see that this scandal is being largely framed as a problem that men do to women. This excludes all the harassment that lesbian and bisexual turds of women do to other women. It also excludes male homosexuals and pedophiles/ephebophiles of all stripes.

Georgina, Weinstein’s wife of 10 years, 10 years!, has left him and I haven’t seen a single person state that Georgina must have as much of a criminal and putrid mind as Weinstein. Otherwise, how could a woman even stand being in the same room with him for more than half an hour.

Very nice to see an accusation against Bob, his brother, on harassment too. I can’t know if it’s true, but Bob’s disgusting declaration to the press that he never knew about anything bad regarding his brother is a major red flag that he is one more that knew very well.

Very nice to see at least some of the people who protected Harvey, who killed the newspaper stories being named for it in the media.

Very nice to see Ronan Farrow with his great article and work. What an interesting young man he is turning out to be. Proof that no matter what crap of parents you have, people are always individuals. And God, did he ever have bad luck with that, Sinatra (mob criminal) and Farrow (married to one child abuser creep and involved with mob criminal), and child abuser creep Allen as stepfather. Ever since Ronan came out in support of his sister, I took note. So many brothers do not. And the fact that NBC killed his story, so he took it somewhere else.

Like this:

A first-year associate at a Manhattan law firm brought her complaint of sexual harassment to the managing partner. Her male boss, she said, had told her to take off her clothing. After months during which she continued to work for the same man, she left, signing a nondisclosure agreement in connection with a severance package.

The associate won’t give her name, fearing retribution for what she thinks would be an obvious breach of a legal contract. A provision in the nondisclosure agreement, or NDA, says that, in exchange for $40,000, she agrees to “not disclos[e] to any person or entity any information … about any one at the firm.” She also agreed to not sue or disparage the law firm. Her boss kept his job.

This is very often how the Harvey Weinstein at your company stays employed—and part of the reason his story rarely spreads beyond office whispers.

…

After the Weinstein revelations, however, the power of NDAs may face new legal and legislative challenges. Two New York State lawmakers recently introduced legislation to void any contract that includes a provision to silence workers about harassment or discrimination. “It is past time that we looked at why we allow this to occur,” said Brad Hoylman, one of the co-sponsors of the bill in the State Senate. “By silencing victims, we’re just creating new victims.”

…

The other problem concerns the statute of limitations that are too short and they serve to protect the perpetrators, not the victims. These laws must be changed.

But of course people knew about Harvey Weinstein. Like the New York Times, for instance. Sharon Waxman, a former reporter at the Times, writes in The Wrap how she had the story on Weinstein in 2004—and then he bullied the Times into dropping it. Matt Damon and Russell Crowe even called her directly to get her to back off the story. And Miramax was a major advertiser. Her editor at the Times, Jonathan Landman, asked her why it mattered. After all, he told Waxman, “he’s not a publicly elected official.”

Manhattan’s district attorney knew, too. In 2015, Weinstein’s lawyer donated $10,000 to the campaign of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance after he declined to file sexual assault charges against the producer. Given the number of stories that have circulated for so long, Weinstein must have spread millions around New York, Los Angeles, and Europe to pay off lawyers and buy silence, including the silence of his victims. But he had something else going for him, too. He knew his victims would be reluctant to go public because it might suggest that some of their success, their fame even, was a function of their inability to protect themselves from being humiliated by a man who set the bar for humiliating others at the precise level of his own self-loathing.

…

One of the refrains you hear today from media experts and journalists is that they’d known about Weinstein’s transgressions for a long time. The problem, they say, was that no one was able to nail down the story.

Nonsense. Everyone had it, not just Waxman. Sure, reporters hadn’t been able to get any stars to go on the record. But that means the story journalists were pursuing wasn’t really about Weinstein’s sexual depredations. It means that what they wanted was a story about actresses, junior executives, or assistants who had been humiliated, maybe raped, and chose to remain quiet in exchange for money and/or a shot at fame.

…

I don’t blame her or Sivan for not saying anything, never mind reporting the story. Weinstein is violent, vindictive, and litigious—as well as sexually abusive—facts that the entertainment and political media knew for years. No one wanted to publish that story. But that’s not the same thing as “not being able to nail it down.” “Nailing it down” would have amounted to nothing more than printing a collection of facts under a byline.

The real issue, as Traister notes, was that “there were so many journalists on his payroll, working as consultants on movie projects, or as screenwriters, or for his magazine.” Traister is referring to Talk, the magazine Weinstein started at Miramax with Tina Brown. The catchword was “synergy”—magazine articles, turned into books, turned into movies, a supply chain of entertainment and information that was going to put these media titans in the middle of everything and make them all richer.

…

Which brings us, finally, to the other reason the Weinstein story came out now: Because the court over which Bill Clinton once presided, a court in which Weinstein was one part jester, one part exchequer, and one part executioner, no longer exists.

A thought experiment: Would the Weinstein story have been published if Hillary Clinton had won the presidency? No, and not because he is a big Democratic fundraiser. It’s because if the story was published during the course of a Hillary Clinton presidency, it wouldn’t have really been about Harvey Weinstein. Harvey would have been seen as a proxy for the president’s husband and it would have embarrassed the president, the first female president.

Bill Clinton offered get-out-of-jail-free cards to a whole army of sleazeballs, from Jeffrey Epstein to Harvey Weinstein to the foreign donors to the Clinton Global Initiative. The deal was simple: Pay up, genuflect, and get on with your existence. It was like a papacy selling indulgences, at the same time that everyone knew that the cardinals were up to no good. The 2016 election demolished Clinton world once and for all, to be replaced by the cult of Obama, an austere sect designated by their tailored hair shirts with Nehru collars. “That is not who we are as Americans,” they chant, as Harvey Weinstein’s ashes are scattered in the wind.

I had stopped blogging, but I wanted to break the “fast” due to the Weinstein scandal.

This was my first reaction when the scandal broke: I’m very happy with it! I wake up with a smile on my face to read the articles and out-pour of testimonies and accusations and revelations about the rot of sexual harassment and violence in Hollywood and in society in general. Not to mention that most or all perpetrators involved so far in the Weinstein scandal are, wait for it, liberals!

You know, the people who think homosexuality, pornography, and promiscuity are normal – and who show themselves to be the personification of evil when it comes to their ethics and greed and immorality.

And not only that, these are the people who will malign to death any social conservative. We all know that if I applied for a job with these garbage of liberals, whether they are the victims or the perpetrators, and I disclosed my ethical and healthy views against homosexuality, pornography, and promiscuity, they would brand me a “bigot” and a “hater” and would deny me the job, preferring to give it instead to someone who has the same sexual sewer in their mind as they do.

And what is the result?

Violence. A society where homosexuality, porn, and promiscuity have been normalized cannot be anything else than a very sexually violent society.

Continue shining the light on the violent liberal sewer that is Hollywood. Including the pedophilia problem.

What I find striking is the many ways that Americans are conditioned like Nazi Germans. On the one hand, in their discourse, they insist on following the law (and by “law”, they mean American laws!). So much so that when there is a law that would prevent American secret agencies from breaking laws regarding American citizens, that is, the national sphere of laws, these agencies must find a way to break the law secretely or to bypass the law through justifications, or to take advantage of legal loopholes, for example, all these secret courts and decisions for mass surveillance. In other words, they allege to the populace that they are “following the law” while behaving in a criminal way. But they must pretend to follow the “rule of law”.

On the other hand, Americans clearly state that they will break all laws in every other country if they want, for purposes of “national security”, “spying”, etc. In other words, the attitude is that they can disregard the rule of law completely once the sphere moves from internal to external. Yes, they justify acting in a criminal way internationally by pretending it’s to “catch bad guys”, but still they believe they are entitled to be criminals as they please. Internally they must pretend to be “following the law”, externally, no pretense is necessary.

It’s very Nazi.

See this article from National Review for a clear example:

Fred Fleitz March 7, 2017 3:06 PM @fredfleitz

According to press reports, WikiLeaks today released thousands of highly classified CIA documents on methods the CIA allegedly is using to conduct cyber warfare. If these documents are legitimate, this illegal release will ruin cyber programs worth billions of dollars that the CIA was using to do battle with America’s enemies, especially terrorist groups.

The CIA officer who took the law into his or her hands to release this material justified this release by claiming this data “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency.” The source also said he or she “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

What nonsense. If the traitor truly believed this program violated U.S. law or endangered the privacy rights of America, there are numerous legal avenues he or she could have used, including the CIA inspector general and the House and Senate intelligence committees. CIA officers take an oath to protect classified national-security information. Such a massive illegal disclosure in violation of the CIA secrecy oath is not an act of courage or whistleblowing, it was “a Snowden” — an act of cowardice by a disgruntled individual who never should have been hired by the CIA.

This disturbing development raises three urgent questions about mismanagement of the CIA during the Obama administration. Why did CIA have a cyber-warfare office at all? I noted in a December 2016 NRO article that there are cyber-warfare offices in four separate intelligence agencies. I suspect this is because different intelligence agencies all wanted to cash in on funding opportunities on a high-profile topic. Such overlap is getting worse and make U.S. intelligence more bureaucratic and less efficient. The new leaker may very well have been hired as a result of CIA Director Brennan’s decision to lower standards for CIA hiring because he wanted to create a more diverse CIA workforce and Brennan rushed to staff his new cyber office. I wrote about this in Investor’s Business Daily in 2015. It also reportedly has been difficult for the U.S. government to find personnel to staff cyber offices who can meet the agency’s usual security requirements. This probably is why Edward Snowden was hired despite his lack of a college degree and how he was able to increase his access to classified material and move between intelligence agencies despite his poor performance. …

If these documents are legitimate, this illegal release will ruin cyber programs…

See the emphasis on the release being illegal, and not the fact that all these activities that the dump discloses are illegal around the world.

Then:

If the traitor truly believed this program violated U.S. law or endangered the privacy rights of America, there are numerous legal avenues he or she could have used, including the CIA inspector general and the House and Senate intelligence committees.

The pretense that corrupt secret agencies and politicians who deliberately state they can commit any crime they want in any country is the person to go-to in case there is a legal problem is downright funny. But still, there is the insistence on the lie that the US functions based on legitimate government officials.

programs worth billions of dollars that the CIA was using to do battle with America’s enemies, especially terrorist groups.

In other words, people that the CIA/Deep State wants to persecute without any regard to the rule of law anywhere, and who, by the history of the US, are usually the people fighting for basic human rights, health care and education, and democracy, in countries ruled by US-sponsored dictators.

I noted in a December 2016 NRO article that there are cyber-warfare offices in four separate intelligence agencies. I suspect this is because different intelligence agencies all wanted to cash in on funding opportunities on a high-profile topic. Such overlap is getting worse and make U.S. intelligence more bureaucratic and less efficient.

But this is what happens when you have a country of greedy and corrupt individuals in a monstrous capitalist system. Everyone wants to take part of the graft. Corruption grows because it meets no resistance, only like-minded individuals.

And why four different cyber-warfare offices? Well, unlike the author, the first and foremost one, I would say, is the greed – imagine just how much public money you can be given on a silver platter, without ever having to behave ethically or show results of any kind? And then there is the mafia aspect. These people have all understood they are above the law since the American public is content to look the other way. The public is happy with a sham of an oversight. So multiple offices means they each work for a “mafia” head, having to answer to that political/elite faction only. It’s like ancient Rome.

Finally:

Heads should roll over this leak.

But, notice, not over the entire criminal activity of the CIA and other military and secret agencies.

I haven’t seen the garbage of people who think homosexuality is normal demand answers from Milo on this: Which pedophiles did Milo expose? What are their full names? And what is the full name of the priest he says abused him? Let’s hear the stories.

Here’s betting a hundred quid, as they say over the pond, that no names will ever be produced, nothing that could identify anyone. Just totally made-up claims.

BTW, The Federalist, of all people!, actually published a good article, “good” as far as today’s sick American society standard goes, about homosexuality and child/teen abuse.

Excerpts:

“In the gay world,” Milo said later, “some of the most important, enriching and incredibly, you know, life-affirming, important, shaping relationships very often between younger boys and older men, they can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys.” “Provided they’re consensual,” he added, “provided they’re consensual.”

During a different interview, with Joe Rogan, Milo talked approvingly of an alleged sexual encounter he had with a priest when Milo was around 14 years old. Milo also described attending Hollywood “boat parties” and “house parties,” where he saw things that “beggar belief.” As Milo put it: “some of the boys at [these parties] were very young. Very young.” Later, he reiterated for the third time: “There were some very young boys around at that time.” In spite of Rogan’s prompting, Milo refused to name anyone at these parties.

But wait: the perversity does not stop there. In a 2006 audio clip that resurfaced in the midst of the Milo debacle, Star Trekalumnus and liberal activist George Takei, who, like Milo, is gay, spoke fondly with radio host Howard Stern (and co-host Robin Quivers) about his sexual experience as a 13-year-old boy with an “eighteen or nineteen” year-old camp counselor.

At one point Stern asked Takei: “Were you molested in a sense, because you were 13?” Takei replied: “No, no…I thought he was pretty attractive.” Stern and Quivers seem captivated and delighted by the story. Quivers prompts Takei for details—“Ahh! Was he gazing into your eyes the whole time? Was he saying anything?”—while Stern cracks wise: “Who wants a hand job without kissing?” Takei describes the experience: “It was both wonderful and scary and kind of intimidating, and delightful.”

Reflect on that for a moment: two adults were listening to a third adult describe an instance of genuine child sexual abuse, and were both happy and jocular about it.

There are two deeply appalling aspects to these sordid interviews. The first is the possibility that, as Milo put it, sexual relationships between young boys and adult gay men occur “very often.” At the Huffington Post last week, “gay conservative” Chad Felix Greene described his own experiences in this regard, having his first sexual encounters with adult men at age 14. As Greene put it, reflecting on the negative effect such behavior has had on his life and the need to stop this “generational pattern of abuse”: “As much as the LGBT world seems to ignore [older gay men having sex with young teenage boys], it seems fairly universal and unfortunately not time-bound to a period when young gay men had fewer options.”

Nevertheless, these revelations are unnerving and profoundly troubling, and the implications of these revelations are terrible, especially combined with many years of research showing disproportionately high rates of child sexual abuse against young gay males. Should we not consider the possibility that something both brutal and endemic is going on here, and that we’re simply ignoring it?

Yet there is another, even more troubling idea at work here: the possibility that these stories have been around for a long time, that many people have known about them for a long time, yet nobody has done anything about it, or even cared.

Consider: Milo’s interview with Rogan took place in September 2015, nearly 17 months ago. His statements on the livestream occurred more than a year ago, in January 2016. Yet his remarks and beliefs did not come to wide attention or constitute a scandal until very recently, when they were publicized by a conservative group opposed to his appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

If a grown male celebrity had spoken approvingly of having sex with 13-year-old girls, including having attended a party where “very young girls” were being used for sex, the reaction would have been swift and ruthless. It would not have taken the man in question more than a year to suffer any consequences, as it did for Milo.

Takei’s own tacit approval of child sex, meanwhile, has been on record for more than a decade, and he has suffered no professional or personal fallout for it.

Author: Daniel Payne is a senior contributor at The Federalist. He currently runs the blog Trial of the Century, and lives in Virginia.